


I Want to Believe All Is Well (That Ends Well)

by Nevcolleil



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Captivity, M/M, Psychological Torture, Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 05:51:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13451862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: An hour after Jack didn't show up at Mac's as he was supposed to, Mac is texted a link. Who else could have gotten the drop on Jack and not left any evidence as to where he's gone?Who else wouldtextMac the evidence of his own crime?(Who else but Murdoc.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Why do we feel the need to see our favorite characters suffer? Is it catharsis? Sadism? :p Or just a craving for the satisfaction of the recovery at the end? I don't know, but if you share the same need I felt when I wrote this, hopefully this fic will not disappoint. Please let me know what you think!I
> 
> Recommended listening for this song? 'Ghosts' by Banners (Because I listened to this as I wrote!)

Mac's worst dreams - he would even call them nightmares - aren't about a bad thing happening, a person or a memory.

They're about a feeling... or a sensation. Perhaps one seemingly innocuous image - like the corner of a door or a closed box. The frayed hem of a fluttering curtain... Alone, the images are hardly something to dream about, much less consider nightmarish. But coupled with a sense of foreboding... A terrible, certain knowledge that he is too late to- Something. That he can't stop- 

Whatever. That if he doesn't move ( _Move_... MOVE, ANGUS...)

(Although he can't move.)

Mac doesn't have them often, but when he does, he wakes up sweating, panting. 

He doesn't believe in dream interpretation. Dreams are the brain processing a million separate fleeting glimpses and wayward thoughts we had throughout our day, Mac believes that. But even if he didn't, he doesn't think he could explain these dreams. 

Jack, in particular, has never understood Mac's definition of a "bad dream."

Of course, Jack isn't exactly qualified to gauge 'good' or 'bad' or otherwise when it comes to dreams; in all of Jack's dreams, bad _or_ good, Jack dies.

But Mac can't think about that.

He tries not to think about the frayed, faded lace curtains fluttering in the window just behind and to the right of Jack - like a phantom from one of Mac's worst nights, pricking at the nerves behind his eyes and drying out his mouth.

Mac's never told anyone, not even Jack, about that specific imagery being in one of his dreams. It's just a silly, stupid (horrifying) coincedence. But logic doesn't settle his pulse down from where it's ratcheted, or make Mac's heart pound any less.

Not that Mac's heart doesn't have plenty of reasons to pound at the moment.

"-like some kind of farmhouse. I want boots on the ground on every farm, ranch, and rural residence in this area," Matty is saying, somewhere in the room.

"-ill central to downtown," Riley is saying to someone else. "Whatever router he's using, it has a _bitch_ of a network output. I can't -"

Mac tunes her back out almost as soon as he's tuned back in. He can't think about _can't_ right now, either. There is no "can't" in his vocabulary at the moment - there can't be. There are no nameless auxiliary agents in dark tac gear coming and going through the war room, like ants through the hub at the heart of one of those sand mazes, trapped between two panes of glass.

There's Jack, sitting in a simple, wooden chair, slumped forward just enough for his chin to touch his chest. He's barefoot - Mac forces himself to notice but not speculate about that - but otherwise just as he was the last time anyone saw him. There's a thin trickle of blood, stopped at the very edge of Jack's hairline - over his left temple - but only a trickle, and his t-shirt and pants are dark but don't look torn or wet, so he doesn't appear to be bleeding anywhere else either. 

Mac can't see Jack's hands, or what's binding them behind his back, but the wooden floor beneath Jack's feet is thankfully blood-free as well, so Mac has no reason to believe that his wrists have been bound too tight or his hands injured in some serious way.

For all intents and purposes, this is all that exists to Mac until Jack gives them some kind of sign of life. Mac, all of the war room's screens save one (displaying a mirror of Riley's laptop screen, and her efforts to trace this signal) streaming this video feed of Jack, and the room in which Jack is being held. 

An hour after Jack didn't show up at Mac's like he was supposed to, Mac received the link for the feed. It was texted to him. Since then he's memorized every knot in every wooden plank in the wall behind Jack. He's strained to spot some identifiable characteristic in the landscape he can barely see through the window curtains covering the one, open window visible through the feed.

( _MOVE, Angus..._ )

He's paced, and he's tried to listen to Matty's advice to just stay calm... Bozer's words of comfort and encouragement. But about a dozen mangled paperclips lay on the coffee table to Mac's right, scattered amongst the tablets and walkies delivered there by ants, devoid of any significant shape or meaning.

Shooting Samantha was a move. That's what they'd thought. A move on Murdoch's part, but apparently it had only been a preview.

When Jack's breathing picks up enough to be heard over the feed, and he twitches - the slightest shift of one shoulder, just the tiniest tilt of Jack's head - Mac's pretty sure the sigh of relief that leaves him can be heard outside. He thinks the whole room sighs with him.

"Jack," Mac says out loud, like he's been saying in his head for what feels like ages, even though he knows that the feed is just a feed - not a two-way connection. Jack can't hear them, even if they can see and hear him.

"Dalton, you had better hold on long enough for us to come get you, " Matty says just the same.

But unfortunately theirs are not the only voices that pick up as Jack regains consciousness.

"Oh good," says a man's voice from off-screen, "I was beginning to worry that I'd hit you too hard, Agent Dalton. And it would be such a shame if you couldn't join us for the festivities. "

Not just any man's voice, obviously - Murdoch's. It's not unexpected. It is, in fact, _exactly_ what they had known to expect. (Who else could have gotten the drop on Jack like Murdoch had, without leaving even a trace of evidence as to where he's gone? Who else would have _texted_ Mac that evidence?)

But it stills Mac's blood regardless of what he's been expecting.

"Matty..." Mac doesn't even know if it's him or Riley that says Matty's name - maybe they both do - or what they're asking her for.

Matty's already busy anyhow. "-reports in the next five minutes, I will make sure that they never report to this agency again," Mac hears her telling someone, in her deadliest of voices - and asking someone else for something Mac can't focus on because now the boundaries of his suddenly limited existence have expanded.

Jack is lifting his head, squinting the way he always does when he first wakes up - and Murdoch is stepping into the feed.

"Murdoch... Is that you, you psycho son of a-"

"Now, now, now, Jack. Let's watch the language," Murdoch all but sing songs. Casual. Cocky. Enjoying himself. "Our boy is watching. You don't really want the last words he'll ever hear you speak to be a bunch of common obscenities, now do you?"

"Matty."

It _is_ Mac speaking this time. Asking their boss to- To what? To go back in time to this morning and prophecize that Murdoch would pick today, of all days, to attack again? To magically have known that he'd pick Jack as the target - and the vehicle - of his attack?

To somehow circumvent time and space and get them to Jack - wherever Jack is - fast enough to stop Murdoch from doing whatever he's standing in front of the screen about to do?

All of the above. No matter how impossible. They don't even know if this feed is current - it could be a stream of a pre-recorded event. For all they know, Murdoch may have already done whatever he's taken Jack to do with him.

Once Mac has the thought, he can't unthink it, and he's only vaguely aware that Matty is responding to him; his lungs have gone tight and his stomach is turning.

"We'll find him, Mac. You hear me?" Matty says, presumably in Mac's proximity. That's Bozer's hand on his shoulder, and Bozer's voice saying something to Riley, but Mac only hears Matty ask, "Keep looking. Do you see any-"

"No," Mac says in answer. He can't see any clue in the feed that Murdoch is sending them. Nothing on the screen tells him where Murdoch could be streaming the feed from. There's no code to be found in the random string of letters and numbers that make up the link that Murdoch sent him. They've already found the phone Murdoch texted it with - a burner phone purchased on the outskirts of the city only yesterday, and dumped on the opposite side of the city almost as soon as the text was sent.

Mac also says his "no" in protest. On screen, Jack is staring Murdoch down. The knowledge of what waking alone, in front of some sort of camera, tied to a chair and at Murdoch's mercy, must mean for him is there in the tight lines Jack's face snaps into once he's fully alert. It's in the grave tone of his voice - and the 'fuck you anyway' twist of his lips as he speaks to Murdoch. But his voice doesn't waver, the resolved set of his jaw doesn't give as Jack says, "If Mac is listening, he knows that nothing he might do, or has ever done, has any bearing whatsoever on whatever crackpot games you brought me here to play, Murdoch."

It's very Jack. Very brave. And, intellectually, Mac knows that it's absolutely true. Whatever happens today... It has nothing to do with anything Mac's ever done, or could have ever done differently. Likewise, there's nothing Jack can say or not say that can likely change whatever Murdoch is planning to do now. 

But it's not Mac's intellect silently praying for every second that Murdoch keeps talking to Jack and not doing anything else.

And it isn't intellectually that Mac feels as though someone has gut punched him when Jack says, "So let's just keep this party between you and me, alright? You tell me what we're celebr-" And Murdoch punches Jack, hard, before he can finish.

Murdoch moves quickly then, pulling something out of his pocket that Mac is terrified to suspect might be a knife before he sees that it's actually a mostly-used roll of duct tape.

Murdoch tapes Jack's mouth shut as Jack strains against his bonds and mumbles, loudly - outraged - through his new muzzle.

"Hmm. So I see that _you're_ going to need a bit more quiet time before we continue, if Macgyver and I are going to get even a _word_ in edgewise, " Murdoch says. Then he looks up, he turns -and he's facing Mac, through the screen, yet again.

"Angus," the man almost coos, a look of such self-satisfaction on his face. .. Mac doesn't know if he wants to scream, cry, put something through the war room widescreen,or murder Murdoch - right here, right now - with his bare hands.

Probably all of the above.

Mac has never genuinely wanted to kill a man before, but he knows he would. If he were in that room-

"Murdoch, don't you fucking dare-" he begins, before remembering that Murdoch can't even hear him.

"I've decided I'm going to call you Angus now, isn't that cozy?" Murdoch says. " No, seriously... I am sincerely asking. If I'm going to kill the very most important person in your life, I feel that I am obligated to treat you with the familiarity that you deserve, thanks to our illustrious history together, when I do it. I mean... Killing a man's other half. That is an act of intimacy, almost as profound as if I were there with you right now, about to kill _you_ instead."

Every word Murdoch speaks is like a tiny shot of extra adrenaline hitting Mac's system. Around Mac, the others react -

"Jesus..."

"He's gotten crazier. I would _not_ have thought that was possible, but the dude has straight up lost his last damned marbles. "

"-nothing in the west quadrant. Damn it. Tell them to expand the search to warehouses, mill stations. If it has four walls, search it. And get our team in the east quadrant on the comms-"

But Mac can't find the words. 

Murdoch leans in closer to the screen - as if he has to stand nearer to be heard when he drops his voice to a sotto voce whisper and says, "Yeah, I kind of figured out your big secret - not that it's _really_ such a secret, I mean. I've seen the EMT reports from that mess you all made down in NOLA. What kind of "best buddy" risks burning his own hands off for the sake of his "friend"? Hmm? Believe me, Angus. It is quite past time we put this whole silly notion of keeping secrets behind us. "

Murdoch steps back, enough that Mac can see Jack again - still straining against his bonds, but with purpose now. Testing them in a recognizable pattern. (Not that it will help.)

Mac can only stare at his face - not Murdoch's - as Murdoch keeps talking.

' _the last words he'll ever hear you speak_.' The curtains just keep fluttering.

"Jack..."

The air seems thin in the war room to Mac. Too thin. But he can't look away from Jack's face to investigate the cause.

"I'll start," Murdoch declares, cheerfully . "First of all, I didn't _really_ want to have to do this to you, Mac. True, shooting Miss Cage did give our mutual friend a fair amount of uninterrupted work time, back in December, for which he was willing to pay _quite_ handsomely... "

He hardly pauses after dropping that bombshell before continuing, "But the outcome I was _truly_ hoping would follow my little visit to casa del Cage was _some_ glimmer of recognition on your part of what is truly at stake here between us."

Mac has no idea what Murdoch is talking about, even though he - unlike Bozer - knows that Murdoch is _not_ crazy. Not the way Bozer means. Murdoch's is the most sociopathic, twisted mind that Mac has ever encountered, but "crazy" suggests a senselessness that he could never accuse Murdoch, with his obsessions and his _painstaking_ meticulousness, of possessing.

Something dark and serious has been creeping into Murdoch's voice as he speaks - and across his face - and it peaks into a sneer, a glower so storm-filled, Mac feels the power of it spread across the war room, quieting conversations Mac hadn't even been aware were going on until they suddenly stop.

"I can _hurt_ you, Angus! " the words seem to boom throughout the war room, quiet as it's become. "You can chase me, you might even catch me again. One day, perhaps you'll even work up the nerve to try and kill me... But you can _never_ hurt me the way that I can hurt you. Just because I haven't - _yet_ \- just because I didn't want to, doesn't mean I can't. Doesn't mean I _won't_. Right now. Whenever I please. And knowing that, _learning_ that, at the sake of poor Agent Cage's immaculate kitchen tiles _should_ have been enough to impress upon you the wisdom of _leaving me be_! "

Murdoch is so impassioned by the time he's finished saying this piece, he's breathing heavily. Mac isn't sure he's breathing at all.

And then, like a switch, Murdoch's face just clears. He shakes himself like he's shaking off the fit of fervor that just overtook him, and unnaturally (or, naturally, considering this is Murdoch) it seems to work.

One huff and another shake and Murdoch is smiling again, voice as smooth as butter.

"But...," he says, as if speaking, exasperated, to a mischievous child he's giving some minor punishment, "Apparently I overestimated the emotional impact an attack upon Agent Cage would have upon you." 

He stops and pretends to think for a moment. "That. And I underestimated Cage's staying power. Tough girl. I guess you're not the only one who's failed to learn his lessons from our previous encounters, Angus," Murdoch adds.

He walks back to Jack - behind Jack. His dark eyes on the screen are expectant. "Murdoch, please..." slips past Mac's lips before he can stop it.

But all Murdoch does is reach for the tape on Jack's mouth. Jack stills. Murdoch isn't standing in a position where Jack could throw himself at him, chair and all, or headbutt him even if he could get the leverage, tied up as he is. But his focus is entirely on Murdoch, Mac can tell.

"Do you remember what you told me when I had _you_ here like this, Angus?" Murdoch asks. "You said that the longer I tortured you, the longer big, strong Agent Dalton here would have to find you. Well."

Murdoch rips the tape off of Jack's mouth and speaks over Jack's cursing at the sting.

"I'm going to let Agent Dalton here choose his last words a bit more wisely, and then I'm going to give you a long, _long_ opportunity to crawl down here and play the hero that you are, " Murdoch promises, the most utterly terrifying expression on his face that Mac has seen yet.

Certainty.

"And if you're not here fast enough to find your "friend" in few enough pieces to have been worth the hurry, then perhaps - _perhaps_ \- _this_ time you'll have learned not to go looking for the devil... lest he return looking for you. "

With that, Murdoch... walks away from Jack.

It's almost- anticlimactic. Even Jack seems to think so. As hushed voices pick up at the back of the war room, and Mac hears Riley and Bozer conferring quietly about something, Riley must click something because another screen pops up to the side of the wall of screens projecting the video feed.

It's a map of the rural areas around Los Angeles close enough for Murdoch to have transported Jack there since this morning and still had time to send that text, discard his burner phone, and get back to Jack by the time he entered the video feed himself.

An impressive amount of area has already been marked off. Few areas remain, but something about all of it strikes Mac as wrong. Just.. wrong. He knows that Murdoch hasn't really walked _away_. Everyone knows it. The hushed voices speak even more urgently than before. Riley barely sounds like herself, when she speaks, and after his one short conversation with Matty, Bozer doesn't seem to say anything at all.

"Don't go looking for the _devil_ ," Jack is saying. "You hear this guy? He's got an even greater flare for the dramatic than you, Mac. Last words. I'll give my last words when-"

Then a sound comes from off screen. Almost soft - like fabric being brushed away from something, or large drapes being pulled back - and Jack's eyes go to the sound.

Mac doesn't need to see it. He doesn't need to see... Whatever. Whatever it is that makes Jack's words just stop in his throat like that. Whatever Murdoch is doing off to the side of his camera, where Jack can see him but no one else can.

"Jack." 

Mac isn't even aware that he's going to take a seat on the coffee table until he does. He can't -

Jack's face? Jack's face shows Mac everything that he can't see for himself. And not because Jack looks afraid. Because Jack looks absolutely, unflinchingly calm.

So carefully, carefully - heartbreakingly - calm... Not a drop of tension in the lines of his face.

From years fighting side by side, facing death _side by side_ , it's like Mac can read Jack's mind for just this one, terrible moment, when Jack's taken obvious effort to ensure that there's nothing else on him to read.

There's a camera rolling. Streaming footage that Mac and Riley and the others will all be on the other side of, if not now then eventually. That they will analyze. Watch, again and again, for any hint of where to find his- Of where to find Jack. How to find Murdoch. Where to even start after-

And the only point of fighting is if you're up against something you have a snowball's chance in hell of actually fighting against. Jack said that once.

As if the shift from one sentence to the next makes perfect sense, and they're having the most casual of casual conversations, Jack turns his face back towards the screen and smiles a smile Mac has also seen from facing death by Jack's side.

"So, hey, yeah, just _because_... I'm gonna tell you something really important, okay? "Jack says "Riley? I'm gonna tell you how incredibly... _incredibly_ proud I am of you. You hear me, sweetheart? How proud I have _always_ been of you. Full stop. I couldn't love you more if you were my flesh and blood daughter, because I'll tell you what. I don't really give a crap about all of that. No disrespect to Elroy - I know he's been doing his best here lately. But far as I'm concerned... you're my girl. Have been since you were twelve years old. And I have been honored to be something... even sort of like a dad to you, especially these last couple of years. You mean the world to me, honey. I hope you know that. "

It's surreal. If Mac's never had a "normal" nightmare before, this is enough to balance out every sweet dream and dreamless night he's ever had. Most of it doesn't even seem to be happening around _him_ \- like in an out of body experience, he is aware of Jack still staring straight at him, unseeing, through the screen. Aware of him saying his piece to Matty, and then to Bozer, and of Riley saying back-

Things Mac can't let himself hear, can't let himself _feel_ , in this half-conscious place. Not and keep breathing (too loud- louder than all the ants...who have apparently suddenly disappeared from the war-room) Someone's activated the privacy glass, like they did for Mac when he stayed with Zoe until-

"No."

That can't happen with _Jack_. Not- _never_ Jack.

Mac knows , _intellectually_ , that with their job- But until this second he's never known - had somehow, between a dusty back alley in Afghanistan... between "that skinny EOD nerd with the silly hamburger name" and "you go kaboom, I go kaboom" lost the ability to accept that Jack Dalton could-

"...and I know she's gonna cuss you six ways to Sunday, cuss both of us, but I'd really appreciate it if you and Matty made sure Riley doesn't see whatever else is on this video I guess y'all must be watching right now-" Jack is saying. "I'm sure she can do her thing... pick apart all the little ones and zeroes, or whatever, without actually watching the whole thing."

"No. "

Even Riley - _literally_ \- fighting Matty and Boze as they lead her out of the war room doesn't burst the little bubble of numbness, of disbelief that has descended over Mac.

For a second, the part of Mac that feels like all of this is _actually_ happening somewhere else, to someone else, wonders airily if numb is just how he's going to feel from now on...

And then Jack says, "Mac... Angus." And he looks at Mac like. ..

Everything snaps back at Mac at once. The quietly huffing sound that is himself, drawing panicky, uneven breaths; the wetness on his face.

"No, Jack..." 

His voice only bears the most passing resemblance to its normal self.

Jack laughs a quiet, broken laugh and says, words thick, "Kid, I have got _so_ damned much to say to you..."

His eyes skitter sideways, almost seeming to move on their own to where Murdoch must be standing, and then return to Mac with something wild in them.

But still not fear. Not really. Only just underneath. The emotion that's shining so brightly in Jack's eyes - even through the imperfect filter of cameras and internet uplinks - is a lot less passive than fear. Less accepting. _Angrier_.

"I don't know how much of it you actually want to hear... How much of this is just me, gettin' greedy. Your friendship is already more than I could ask for, Mac, and I mean that. Which is half the reason I've never said- Well. A few things you've maybe already guessed," Jack says, "with that big brain of yours." And Mac thinks this is what it means for words to _cut_.

Jack laughs that heartbreaking, not-laugh again and shakes his head. "Or maybe not. You're a weird guy, Angus Macgyver. I'm thankful for it... But you're weird. I mean, look at us, huh? Most people, they take their first trip overseas and they bring home some souvenirs. You brought home a crazy old man. "

Mac can't help but laugh, too, at Jack's words, old and new. The sound is like glass in Mac's throat, and his vision goes blurry until he wipes his eyes.

Jack's calm resolve seems to be wavering too. He swallows, once, again, and he says, "I'm not gonna tell you everything that I wanna tell you... I don't want you hearing those words from me for the first time - for real, no fronting... none of that 'like a brother' bullshit - here, like this. Rememberin' 'em when you remember this. " 

" _Jack_..."

 _This_. Yes, this is what a nightmare is - fed by a dream. Jack implying things Mac has always been too afraid to even hint at consciously-

Afraid. _God._ What had that word even meant before now? _Now_ Mac knows what it is to be afraid. He shakes with it - like a trauma victim. Like he's just been pulled from an icy bath, uncontrollably.

He could have told Jack years ago how he feels about him. How he's tried _not_ to feel, because it was - what? Embarrassing - thinking it was just Mac who felt it, who couldn't not. Scary not knowing how Jack would react if he knew? Easier to pretend that he wouldn't still be devastated if Jack left him without ever knowing...

"And I'm not gonna tell you with that nut job listening in - he'd like that too much, the sick fuck," Jack says with a flare in his eyes before the heat dies down again into mostly sorrow. "But you gotta know, Mac, " Jack says, his words weighted heavier than Mac has ever heard before, "whichever grunt knocked my bolt carrier off of that bunk a lifetime ago in the sandbox? I owe that man more than I can ever repay. 'Cause that was the single best thing that's ever happened to me. You understand, Angus? I am thankful for that moment every _day_. I wouldn't trade it for anything in Heaven or on Earth, hand to God. I've had more than my fair share of blessings in this life, and all but one of them came out of that moment right there. 'Cause that moment - that moment linked me to you. "

Jack is leaning forward in his seat, as far as he can in his bonds, staring down the camera intently - as if he can burn the meaning of his words into Mac's brain with the sheer intensity of them.

And, oh, he does. Mac would give his own life to be able to take Jack's face in his hands and assure him that, "yeah, I understand, big guy". To tell him that he means them too. That he always has. Since the moment he looked up from folding a paperclip into the shape of a Delta sigma - a silly, simple lovenote he'd never send - and saw Sergeant Jack Dalton standing at his side again, impossibly. For another sixty-four days that turned into what Mac had eventually begun to let himself hope would last forever, whatever he's told himself whenever he's chickened out of telling the man that he loves him. If he hadn't begun to hope... he wouldn't feel this hollowed out right now. Would he? This near to a kind of death himself.

"It's not just you, man, " the words shudder out of Mac. "Jack, it's not just you."

Murdoch has one thing absolutely right. He _can_ hurt Mac. He is hurting him. If he does what those slight, metallic sounds Mac has been hearing coming from off camera would suggest - it really will be like he's right here in the war room, killing Mac himself.

Jack opens his mouth - to add what, Mac can't say. Because then Murdoch steps in front of him, with a kind of fire burning in his eyes and through the screen as brightly as Jack's had.

But whereas the fire that fuels Jack is beautiful, even in the face of fear and suffering - alive and warm and fierce - the fire in Murdoch has only the most destructive of the qualities relatable to an actual flame. Greed. A heat born of selfish, all-consuming hunger.

"My, my. That wasn't half bad coming from a man who has undoubtedly taken _nearly_ as many lives as I have over the years, " Murdoch says "You do seem to attract a certain type, don't you, Mac? The idealistic killer. Has any purer breed of oxymoron ever manifested itself in human form? "

"Why don't you let me out of these ropes, huh?" Mac hears Jack fire back at Murdoch from behind him. "You coward. We'll see which _oxy moron_ is the purer breed then."

Jack... is so Jack. Even now, knowing what Mac knows with a fist gripping his throat, dug down deep in his chest and squeezing his heart in pulses of terror.

Murdoch doesn't look back. Doesn't look away from the camera - from Mac, essentially. He looks almost somber as he says, "But last words only really mean anything if they're the last. I hope Jack's mean something to you, Angus. It would be a shame if after all of this we only ended up back here yet again because you simply don't know...when to...stop... "

As he speaks, Murdoch adjusts something on the camera, then something else, words broken by each break in his concentration.

With his final glance through the screen, the very corners of Murdoch's lips tilt upward in a cruelly careless smirk. When he reaches towards the camera, there's a knife in his hand - and then Mac's screen goes blank.

Mac's gasping breath seems to echo off of the walls of the war room.

He actually falls to his knees, off of the edge of the coffee table. If Murdoch _could_ see Mac - even through the one way connection he just cut - he would no doubt eat up the sight.

But it isn't what it seems. Mac hasn't collapsed with grief. 

Weak with relief, it takes Mac two tries to call out for the others. 

"Guys!" comes out like a huff. "MATTY!" actually does the trick.

Mac is already spilling the good news by the time Matty storms in.

"I know where he has Jack."


	2. Chapter 2

Once Mac figures it out, the misdirection - the slips ... (Or were they signs? Murdoc manufactured such an elaborate ruse as the background of this latest attack. He wouldn't run the risk of all that work going undiscovered and therefore "unappreciated", would he?)

Once Mac finally pinpoints _what_ is wrong with the room Murdoc's video has been streaming from - and what Murdoc said to give it away - there's still the matter of actually getting to the site.

Mac allows himself to be outfitted in tac gear, and then he joins the first transport headed for their destination, fifteen minutes across town. 

Fifteen minutes. In which Jack may still be enduring Murdoch's... lesson to Mac - fifteen minutes away this whole time, and Mac hadn't seen it. Mac spends most of the "fifteen" minute trip (they make it in ten) hating himself and rethinking everything.

The curtains perpetually fluttering in the breeze coming through that window in Jack's room... Mac hadn't paid them any attention at first. He'd been so determined _not_ to pay them specific attention, sure that his discomfort at the sight of them was unreasonable, imaginary. And when he had noticed them, it had been in passing - there was Jack on the screen, not moving. The floor, the chair, the wall at Jack's back; the open window with a glimpse of landscape through it, the curtains... Mac had been so focused on evaluating each and every object for how Jack might be able to use them when he woke up ( ~~if he woke up~~ ) to escape, while simultaneously so distracted, watching Jack for any sign of life.

He hadn't once considered how _Murdoc_ was using the same things.

What did he get out of giving Mac and Phoenix a sneak peak of where he was keeping Jack - almost thirty minutes before actually saying or doing anything to Jack or even addressing Mac through the camera?

Was he just taunting them? So - justifiably - certain that they wouldn't be able to find him anyway? Was he taunting _Mac_ with the seeming absence of anything Mac could see in the room that could even potentially help Jack?

It should have occurred to Mac that Murdoc would have an even more complicated motive behind his actions. It should have occurred to Mac:

What natural breeze never pauses, never picks up? 

A _natural_ breeze isn't that steady - isn't consistent. But the breeze from an electric fan is. 

When they reach the warehouse, Mac isn't the first through the door, but he makes sure that he's the second. Even with Matty in his ear, telling him to hold up, and everyone in their tac team spreading out to do a sweep, Mac turns in the direction that he knows - if his memory of the dimensions within this building are correct - is just the right size for...

"Oh my god..." Riley breathes through her comm as she sees the footage through Mac's vest cam.

Within the cavernous space off the main cargo area within the warehouse, Murdoc doesn't just have Jack - he has the entire "farmhouse" room Mac and the others watched Jack wake up in. Wood plank walls supported by framework like stage props... topped by a structured wooden ceiling; it's likely that even Jack took one look around him and thought that he was in a traditional room inside a little old farmhouse somewhere in the countryside, well outside of the Los Angeles city limits.

"He wasn't masking his connections outside the city to hide his signal," Riley catches on immediately. "He didn't _have_ any outside network connections. He's been bouncing his signal around the city and transmitting from here this whole time. "

"You're telling me Murdoc's had Jack here in the city from the start?" Mac hears Bozer say near enough to the same comm to be heard. And that's _exactly_ what Mac's been telling them.

Everything that had been in the room with Jack on the video feed - including the dimensions of the room itself - had been a misdirection.

Including the window. In the side of the structure that Mac has come up upon is what looks like the back of a large widescreen tv mounted sideways across a window-sized opening cut out of the fake wall. Small electric fans have been mounted across the bottom of the opening. 

The almost non-existent hum of the fans and the quiet sounds coming from the flat screen (wind, chickens clucking in the distance - _god_ , Murdoc went the fucking whole route on this) are the only sounds coming from the structure.

It's not like he stopped moving when he spotted the structure across this side of the warehouse, but with this sign that Mac got it right - that Murdoc took Jack here, _here_ , to the same abandoned space near the Grand Street Fire Station where Murdoc had held, and planned to kill, Mac almost exactly one year ago - Mac's pace picks up, the tac agents Matty has redirected towards Mac close on his heels.

" _Jack_? Jack, tell me you're still in there!" Mac yells.

If Mac's right about Murdoc's clue-dropping (' _when I had you here like this_ ,' Murdoc had said; Mac didn't examine the words closely in the moment - he assumed Murdoc just meant when he'd abducted Mac, but then Murdoc also said ' _back here yet again_ ') then the element of surprise isn't an issue. But speed is. Like in one of his nightmares, Mac just _knows_ he can save Jack... if he only gets to him fast enough.

"Jack!"

"Agent Macgyver, let us clear the -"

Mac knows how to clear an area. Bombs haven't been Murdoc's style, but Mac didn't miss the assassin's claim to have worked for/with the Ghost. He searches for trip wires, pressure plates, triggers as he rounds the wooden structure looking for a door, and - seeing nothing - proceeds. 'Quick and easy' aren't Murdoc's style either. He's not lying in wait to pick Mac off as he walks into the fake room. Mac will stake his life on it.

"Mac, goddamn it, let tac do their goddamn jobs-"

But Matty's voice as Mac walks through the door isn't the loudest. 

Mac takes two steps into the room before he even processes what he's seeing in it, but at Riley's sharp, shrill scream, Mac finally fumbles a senseless hand up and over his vest cam.

"No..." Mac can only whisper.

Riley's screams continue over Bozer's words, to Riley and to Mac, shaky and thick-tongued but trying to hold it together for the rest of them ("Mac, back out of there, man. Just back out, buddy... ") Until one of them, probably Bozer, switches off her comm.

"I wasn't wrong." Mac can't have been wrong about this. Murdoc created the _perfect_ smokescreen to hide his location. Trusting that, as he was sure to trust that, Murdoc wouldn't have rushed through- He would want to take his time, to kill Jack _just_ before Macgyver arrived to "play the hero." He can't have sacrificed that opportunity to rub that much salt in Mac's wounds.

He _can't_.

Over the sound of his own breathing, Mac finally hears that Matty has continued to talk to him through the comms. "-the rest, Mac. Just- Jesus, somebody walk him out of there. Bring him home," she tells Darden, their tac team leader.

There's so much blood.

 _Everywhere._ The walls... There's bloodspray on the ceiling. The flatscreen "window" finally looks like a flatscreen, the way the screen glows through the wet, red streaks across it. One of the curtain panels is still fluttering in its manufactured breeze, but the other is too sodden to move.

"Agent Macgyver-"

There's _too_ much blood. No bod- No Jack. Not even the chair he was tied to. Mac sees the carts lined up just to the right and behind the camera set up, full on both shelves with... tools, and Mac's vision goes dark on the edges, filled with spots. His nostrils are burning with the smell of blood.

But there's too much of it in the room. No body. And the tools are pristine. Wiped absolutely clean.

"I'm not wrong." The words punch out of Mac on a breath like a vacuum breaking, exploding oxygen into an airless space.

Murdoc said Mac would have plenty of time to "play" at being a hero - but how did he say it? He said Mac would... ' _crawl down here and play the hero that you are_ -"

Crawl.

Murdoc's original torture room was down in the basement. They've been misdirected again.

"Agent- _Agent Macgyver_!" Darden shouts after him, as Matty calls for Mac too, but Mac can't explain himself this time. He's not sure what will come out of his mouth if he opens it. He just has to get to the access point for the warehouse's basement, he has to get to the end of the hall through those metal doors.

He doesn't let himself linger on the handwritten note Murdoc's taped to the door. 'let this mean something, angus' it reads.

"Jack! I'm coming. You just hold on!" Mac shouts when he can.

He stumbles through the door, down the stairs, eyes immediately finding Jack where he sits, slumped over again in that chair. 

There's a knife stuck in his chest.

No. Not a knife. Something smaller, thinner - and not in his chest - closer to his shoulder, just to the left of anything serious. There isn't even all that much blood soaking Jack's shirt around the injury.

Mac gets closer and sees that the "knife" is actually an _ink pen_. Pinning a second note to Jack with a single line written on it. A link. Like the one Murdoc sent Mac at the start of this.

Jack seems to stir, he lifts his head-

And Mac blacks out. He must. He doesn't remember stumbling the rest of the way to Jack. He can't remember if he's the one who cut Jack out of his ropes.

When Mac comes to, he's laid his head in Jack's lap. With his head turned as it is, he can see boots streaming up and down the stairs into the torture room.

But all he can hear is Jack's voice. 

(' _...the last words he'll ever hear you speak..._ ')

Mac can feel Jack's hand of his head, fingers running through Mac hair.

"...to us, buddy. No rush. Just whenever you're ready," Jack is saying. "I'm fine, though, really. I promise. See? Already bandaged up and everything. Speaking of which, Riley, honey, if you could just shift over a scootch- No, no, no - You're fine. Just go easy on the pen cushion there. You get it, Mac? _Pen_ cushion - like, P-E-N, 'cause Murdoc stuck me with a-"

From Jack's other side, Riley groans.

"No puns, Jack," Mac finds it in himself to say, raising his head at last.

"Yeah. I guess y'all have been through enough today already, haven't you?" Jack grins and says.

Mac doesn't think he's ever been so glad to see it. And that's counting the times, innumerable, that Jack's grin was the first thing Mac saw after Jack pulled his ass - sometimes literally - out of the fire.

"I swear to God, Jack, if you don't shut up, I'm putting another hole in you. To match Murdoc's," Riley says, but when Mac looks over at her - she's knelt at the other side of the chair, arms carefully looped over the shoulder Jack has indeed had bandaged - she's smiling at him. Nothing but relief and joy in her face.

Mac takes a shuddery breath and feels, at last, like the nightmare is over.

Not that he's forgotten any of it - the way that dreams, even bad ones, are forgotten eventually.

It's kind of hard for him to forget - he's still kneeling at Jack's feet. Jack's let his hand fall away from Mac's hair, it lies in his lap where Mac's cheek lay just a moment before, but there's something that strikes Mac as too casual about the stillness of it. Like Jack would still be touching Mac if he had it his way, and he has to hold himself still very carefully so he doesn't reach for Mac again.

Or maybe Mac's just projecting his own need onto Jack. But there's a carefulness to the expression on Jack's face, as well. And, yeah, that could be because Jack is trying so hard to act calm and light, to help ease Riley and Mac down to something approaching calm- But maybe it's because he said some things while Murdoc's camera was rolling (they both said some things - not that Jack knows about Mac's side of it) that he doesn't know what to do with now. Or he does, but he isn't sure of what Mac wants to-

Mac laughs out loud - a quick, probably manic-sounding little burst of a laugh that make Jack and Riley stare at him in surprise and concern.

Murdoc's right about a couple of things. Mac really _doesn't_ learn. Didn't he _just_ experience what it feels like to have lost someone he cares about because of what he thought _might_ be true?

"You alright, Mac?"

"Yeah, kid, you oka-"

"Stop calling me 'kid'," Mac says. He's done being misdirected. 

He surges up, takes Jack's face in his hands like he wished he could do in the war room, and doesn't even wait for Riley to disentangle herself from Jack to press his mouth and Jack 's together.

Riley's "Whoa, _what_?" in the background is apologetically but determinedly ignored.

And then Mac is kissing Jack. And more importantly... Jack's hand slowly rises and settles - at first, tentatively, and then with some weight - at the small of Mac's back. And Jack is kissing Mac back.

"Okay.. that is _not_ what I was expecting to come down here and see," Mac hears Bozer's voice as if from a distance. "I mean, I'm not complaining, considering I was expecting Mac to find Jack down here _dead_ , like, twenty minutes ago, but-"

"Okay, people, the free show is over," Mac hears Matty say a moment later. "Thank you for all your help, but I need this room cleared for now. Miss Davis, Agents Dalton, Macgyver, and Bozer only."

Mac reluctantly draws back... and opens his eyes just in time to see Jack's eyes flutter open.

Mac's pretty sure Jack would call the EMTs back to check _him_ out if Mac said so, but that doesn't change the fact that Mac thinks that Jack is beautiful as he watches those long lashes part and Jack's whisky-dark gaze find him.

"I want to hear _all_ of it," Mac says before he can overthink again and backtrack.

He can literally see the moment Jack realizes what he's talking about (' _I don't know how much... you want to hear_ ,' Jack said in the goodbye Murdoc had him film). 

Jack's eyes widen and that careful calm he's wearing so bravely flickers just a little bit.

"Well. We'll... have to talk about that..., " Jack says slowly, adam's apple bobbing in his throat, like it's not that he can't think of what to say - he's trying very hard not to say all of it at once. "When we have less of an audience, huh?"

And he doesn't sound like he's putting Mac off. His grin seems to widen, and it reaches his eyes this time. His hand stays resolutely clenched in the jacket on Mac's back.

"We'd appreciate that," Matty's words break in. "We do, after all, still have a madman on the loose in Los Angeles. The _same_ madman who has attacked my people a total of five times now. I don't want there to be a sixth attack."

"No, ma'am," Mac says, turning to face her but not moving any further away from Jack.

From the way Jack flexes his fingers at Mac's back, he seems to approve.

It's a testament to how much all of them have been through today that Matty acts like she doesn't see anything out of the ordinary. She even says, "But for the record, Dalton? I'm glad we found you in one piece."

"Glad to be found, Matty," Jack replies. And he makes no mention of the red rim of Matty's eyes. "Thank you."

Eyes that lock with Jack's just a moment and share some sort of unspoken, probably inexplicable ex-CIA, post-captivity-and-near-death message.

She nods. "Alright, then. Let's see about this second link Murdoc's left for us." She switches on a lamp and a projector someone has set up for them, roughshod, on a folding table nearby.

Riley is already reaching for her bag and the laptop inside - albeit with a look in both Mac's and Jack's direction that says they _will_ be talking about this with her as well.

But Bozer looks at all of them like they've lost their minds.

"WHA- _Seriously_? We're not even going to _address_ -" Bozer begins, with a flail of his arms that encompasses Mac, Jack... And a good portion of Murdoc's torture room as well. Mac gets what he's saying. But-

"Not right now, we're not, " Jack says at the precisely the same moment that Matty says, "Absolutely not."

Mac could laugh out loud, and not just at the synchronized response. But he just says, "Later, Boze."

He's gotta talk to Jack, alone, first.

He's been waiting all day for the chance.

 

∆°∆°∆

 

Murdoc's second video is a pre-recorded file shared through a non-descript public file sharing service Riley knows won't tell them anything before Mac's even finished reading the URL in his head. (Although she tries to use it track Murdoc anyway.)

It's a fraction of the length of the first, and this time there is nothing in the frame with Murdoc to give them any hint as to where he's gone now - other than inside when he shot the footage, against a white wall that could exist in any structure anywhere.

Murdoc's message isn't as vague.

"Macgyver... Can I assume that you have neither disappointed me _nor_ failed Agent Dalton, who I assume is _also_ watching this footage right now?" Murdoc says, looking eerily pleased for having _failed_ to leave Jack in the pieces he'd threatened to leave Jack in.

If that had ever really been Murdoc's intention. The more Mac listens, the more he wonders. And then his suspicions are confirmed.

"I'm going to be an optimist, Mac - No. I'm going to have _faith_ that, despite your many missed opportunities to disengage from this _silly_ , self-destructive campaign of yours to keep a loving father from his son..., " Murdoc continues, "You have indeed rescued your precious Jack and are, even as we speak, planning how next to locate me, relocate Cassian, or inflict _some_ sort of unpleasant inconveniences upon my person. "

Murdoc gazes coldly into the camera and says, simply, drawing out the word, "Ssstop."

"Do not for one second kid yourselves that Dalton evaded one single wound, one solitary horror that I ever intended to inflict upon _him_ , " Murdoc goes on.

"I did not come here to kill your love, Macgyver, although I did hope to expose it. Why? So that you understand exactly what I mean when I say that I can hurt you - so that you know that _I_ know exactly where to strike at you, and how, and how utterly I can destroy you. 

"Stop looking for me," Murdoc issues his ultimatuum. "Release my son. Or, if you don't, know that someday - on a day like today, of some minor personal significance... Or on a day like any other, bearing no consequence at all. One day I will return... I will put those sweet, sweet last words Agent Dalton spoke to their intended use, in just the same way that I will employ every _single_ fun toy and tool of my trade I have so generously provided examples of for the sake of this demonstration. "

The camera shakes and then settles even more securely, as if Murdoc was holding it in his hand and only now has placed it on a tripod. He sticks close to the camera lens, and the sense of unease that will never really leave this room - that has only been ratcheting up, and up... and up since Murdoc started talking-

-is proven more than warranted when Murdoc says, "And, most importantly, know this, Mac: the one problem with a game-winning move is that, afterwards, the game is over."

Murdoc straightens. "Let me have Cassian. Before I tire of this game enough to end it."

Then Murdoc walks casually away. As he does, two carts identical to the ones left in the fake room, down to each tool and towel and bucket, become visible.

Only the contents of these carts have literally been used and put away wet. 

And whoever Murdoc used them on... lies in a small pile nearby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... obviously that last little bit is a bit of a cliffhanger, if I can think of a way to return to it. I want to write more of Mac and Jack and what happens next between them as a sequel, if I can keep my motivation going. I LOVE this pairing :) But our fandom is so small and so quiet! Actually posting what I write can sort of set me back because I assume there isn't an interest or what I've written is just REALLY not what people are looking to read, since I don't get a lot of feedback. 
> 
> Those of you who told me you like this, thanks so much. I hope you enjoyed the ride!


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